•Explore partnering with wholesalers and real estate agents who bring you off-market deals.5.Continue Building Credit:•As your properties generate income, pay down your credit lines strategically to maintain high credit limits and low utilization.

Neither outcome is good for you.I give some approximations of each expense category in The Hands-Off Investor, but the best way to nail down operating costs is to look at the property's historical performance.For example, Contract Services and Utilities. 

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

If you can live for free and only pay utilities AND buy an investment property, that would be ideal in terms of savings and cash flow.If you can't stay and your parents want to make some money on that property, then yes, house hacking would be your best option especially since you don't want the best place in the multi.

Separately metered with tenants paying all utilities.

I’ve got that Arizona license #AZ-21837, and I lean on a pretty wide network of top-tier realtors and boots-on-the-ground pros who can give you insights you might not find by just browsing listings online.

If not, you will have to utilize hard money which will drastically increase holding costs.

Even though I myself have a S8 rental, what you hear online is completely false.

A tough thing we've found though (like you mentioned) is even the highly rated foundation folks in our area -- as well as a lot of the content online -- all have a strong incentive to sell big high-margin solutions.

Look it up online and see how much u actually can buy.